If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to develop for the Android operating system, and we know there are tons of you out there, it’s not going to get any easier than this. If you’re a visual learner like myself, always preferring diagrams, posters and videos, you might want to check this out. A series of videos have been put together by TheNewBoston and the folks over at mybringback totaling up to about 200 episodes of non stop code action. Alright, well I wouldn’t quite make it sound that exciting because lets face it, programming is not exciting. It’s what comes to fruition that’s exciting. Think you have the next Angry Birds in you? A systematic play list has been arranged by ChangingTheUnknown for your convenience and offers easy access and learning. It doesn’t get any easier than this folks. Being in the form of YouTube videos, you can watch these anywhere, anytime, and most likely on any device. Convenience is the key, I always say.

It’s difficult these days to find good quality content like this for free. So, we tip our hats to these cats for putting this together and encourage you to take advantage of the free education. There are countless videos showing you more code than you’ll know what to do with. So, if you’re ready to get your learning on and maybe even eventually make some cash with a hit application, you can head on over to the video series to get started. We can’t see this type of tutorial appealing much to the experienced developer, but if you’re a newbie who wants to start dabbling in code for Android, this should be right down your alley. And as always, feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below. Hit the break to check out a few video samples from the tutorial.

You know that HTTPS (Secure HTTP) and VPN (Virtual Private Network) are a more secure way to browse the web but what exactly happens behind the scenes when you use either of these options? Why do you need to use a VPN when you have already turned on HTTPS?

The Privacy Team at Google has recently added a couple of short and useful videos to YouTube that try to explain technical jargon like HTTPS, VPN, WPA (for secure Wi-Fi) in simple English and why these are important. Take a look.

HTTPS in Simple English

VPN in Simple English

The basic idea is that you encrypt traffic between your computer and the web server so that eavesdroppers cannot see any of that information. HTTPS will only encrypt traffic between your browser and a particular website while VPN will encrypt all traffic between your computer and the Internet.

quarta-feira, 24 de agosto de 2011

Speech-recognition technology is making the world more accessible. Not only is it changing the way we use computers, but it is making our cellphones more useful and making our comes more connected.

Speech recognition still has a long ways to go, though. As Google will tell you, speech-recognition technology is challenging and complicated to implement. There are a lot of steps between you reciting a sentence and the computer or phone writing those words out on the screen.

To better explain the science and impact of automated speech recognition (ASR), Medical Transcription has created an infographic that goes through the technology behind ASR. It also explores some of the most interesting ASR projects in development.

How has speech recognition changed how you live and work? Let us know in the comments.